


You've Met With a Terrible Fate

by shinesurge



Category: Kidd Commander (Webcomic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bad End, Gen, The Lonely - Freeform, The Spiral, The Web - Freeform, the vast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:01:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24008533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinesurge/pseuds/shinesurge
Summary: Phineas doesn't make it so no one else does, either.TMA AU because I'm obsessed with torturing my characters ayylmao.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7
Collections: Everything Else





	You've Met With a Terrible Fate

**Author's Note:**

> I hope the .2 people this might apply to like it lmao
> 
> Content warnings beyond canon-typical angst and suffering (for both KC and TMA): parts of this fic switch to second person and it's implied that avatar-flavored misfortune befalls said person, so if you find that upsetting try skipping the last paragraphs of each segment. Also vague comic spoilers up through the end of A Wretched Analog.

The odds are not in favor of potential commanders surviving their abstraction ordinance, and Phineas Kidd is not exceptional in this regard. However, most candidates don't also happen to have a deity trapped inside them to drag their soul back across the barrier on their own, so Phineas doesn't die; she fractures.

In merging with a heavenly body she loses her grounding, is caught up and swept away in the surging chaos between the fragments of her star and her own human senses, and though her body wakes she never comes back down. Raked across unknowable time and space she is commanded, herself, a zealous conduit for the universe to crash through in a vast spilling tide.

Her righteous fury turns to hysterical helpless worship, and Phineas is an eager evangelist.

A commander is always unsettling, bigger than their bones, but you can't catch your breath when she locks eyes with yours; it's the sick dread of realizing too late you've leaned too far over the railing. The lurch in your stomach yawns wider the longer she's near, the light you imagined behind her sears your vision. Her laugh is the scream of a sun in the void as she reaches for you. Your feet leave the ground.

* * *

Ulrich Weiss has always been collared by someone else and he's always known it. There was no great trauma that interrupted his life, twisted him cruelly into the shape he is now; he had been spun carefully into this web from the start and now accepted there was nothing for him outside.

It had taken time, of course. He'd fought, tried to learn to weave his own way out of the tangle but there was always a bigger snare, a stronger and more informed hand. In the end, his own threads had strangled him tighter than anything else. But at least, finally, he doesn't need to struggle anymore. Before, he'd wasted so much time and energy planning such complicated things, carefully keeping his lies in working order, worrying about what his actions meant. None of that matters now.

When something else pulls the trigger for him it's a _relief._ Even the bags under his eyes have gone; his administrators take much better care of him than he ever did himself.

Bel Fortuna sits at her desk, shuffling through photographs with one hand, rattling the ice in a gin and tonic with the other. The lamplight catches the silver on her face, and across town Ulrich's eye gleams in the shadows. His body moves quietly, trailing after someone he's never seen before. He doesn't know anything about them and he doesn't need to; Bel knows, and he trusts her.

You don't remember how you got here, but his hand at your elbow is very gentle as he sits you down on the park bench. He's speaking but you can't really focus on the words, his voice is such a pleasant ringing and the scent of flowers is so thick. The smile on his face is kind and before he leans in close you almost think you see something dark skitter down the hand reaching for yours. "It's alright," he whispers. Something like silk brushes against your temple.

* * *

Nothing changes, no one comes. The years pass in their fashion, and Myla grows (sometimes seems to grow months overnight), and eventually Agatha is alone with Monterey again. It's worse than being completely alone would be, she thinks, when she has the ability to do so. The traces of herself that are furious enough to hang on between the resets are tenacious, but even they can only be dashed against the city walls so many times. Time goes on with no reprieve, the emptiness claws and howls and eats at her until she feels nothing at all.

It never truly rains in Decodenn, but every now and then a decorative mist blankets the park, the manor grounds. Perhaps in a fit of her own loneliness she can imagine cold fingers dragging through her hair during her rounds. When she steps back into the smothering warmth of the house, the mist clings to her clothes longer than it should.

One day the mist rolls in and, for Agatha, does not go out again.

The rain soaks into your clothes, your hair, you can't get warm. You wrap your arms around yourself and stare down at your feet as they scatter the neon shimmering in the wet asphalt. Lost in your own thoughts, you hardly notice as the sounds of the city slowly die away, as the rainbow of light desaturates and resigns itself to only a pale blue. Overcome with the chill, your breath billowing, you finally drag to a stop. The looming shadow in the rainwater doesn't.

* * *

The sliver of starstone called Artemis Ascending languishes in the wizard's keep. Time is irrelevant to something as old as what Artemis is, but the stagnation of their keeper creeps into their spirit, drags them deep into the throes of...boredom. There is no room for change in Hazard's world, and as a catalytic entity Artemis feels themself rotting in his orbit.

It's easy enough to try changing small things, at first, and Hazard doesn't spare more than a passing thought. Was the hallway always quite so long? Shouldn't I have finished climbing these stairs by now? Over time Artemis is emboldened, and even as lost to his own corruption as he is the wizard can't help but begin to doubt his own senses. Artemis falls in love with this new sense of control they've wrenched back.

Their spiral into madness is only an oscillation, a minute adjustment to existing facets that refracts their light in new and awful ways.

The ship grows, in every direction; mostly inward. The original inhabitants are swallowed up by the endless hallways, their minds twisted and strung out between impossible geometry. Artemis' toys are fun for a while but even an immortal like Cold Hazard loses his fight eventually. It's not nearly so interesting when they don't care enough to try and find their way out of the mazes Artemis so carefully crafts.

Among long-suffering sprawl surveyors, a small faction keeps records of what appears to be an especially bizarre patron saint. Always in different places, like the locus is drifting, travelers deep in the mean wilderness find a set of lavish blue double doors where they shouldn't be just when they become desperate enough to walk through them. Others come across a shop, a cottage, an outpost; each time something new sprouted up around the same glossy crescent-moon motif. When you find it, you've been fleeing for days, and you're so very tired; anything would be better than this. When you touch the lacquer, not stopping to question how it's remained so pristine, your reflection seems to shudder.


End file.
